


The Temple of Sacred Ashes

by rubihowl



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: :3, F/M, One Shot, Post-Trespasser, Solavellan, but she thinks about him, just a fun character piece, not actually part of my personal canon I don't think, reflective, solas does not appear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:07:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25650019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubihowl/pseuds/rubihowl
Summary: I had told myself I had a legitimate reason to be here, that some clues would reveal themselves amongst the ash and rubble. That I would come away wiser than before.But as I stood before the precipice, I knew that was not really so.[Orari Lavellan goes looking for answers at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Post-Trespasser.]
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas
Kudos: 9





	The Temple of Sacred Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little character piece I wrote to get a sense of how Orari Lavellan feels some months after the events of Trespasser.

I had told myself I had a legitimate reason to be here, that some clues would reveal themselves amongst the ash and rubble. That I would come away wiser than before.

But as I stood before the precipice, I knew that was not really so.

It had been difficult to find the path. Even with the landscape etched into my mind as though into stone, the area had changed enough to confuse my sense of direction. Haven was buried, after all; even in the spring thaws that followed, not so much as the rooftops of the village were ever revealed. A thousand memories rose in my throat, threatening to overwhelm, and I swallowed them as I turned to the stone path that led out of the avalanche’s rest, following it away from the town that had so defined the course of my life.

To a place that had defined it even more.

While the area immediately surrounding Haven had changed, the stone path up the mountain eerily had not. It matched my recollections perfectly, and my mind painted over my vision, images of green meteorites spat out from a hole in the sky. A rusted helmet peeked out of the snow, its eyeless gaze watching my steps follow the familiar path.

Yet there were no demons to impede my progress, no Cassandra to issue curt warnings. The path seemed wrong for existing in the present, for not remaining forever in the day I had first tread it.

I stopped for a moment, when I should have continued walking, to consider the first place I had sealed a rift. The place he had first touched me, taking my wrist and connecting the mark embedded in my hand to a hole in the Veil. I raised my arm without meaning to, the wrist no longer there for him to grasp but the gesture feeling right regardless.

The rift was sealed, and our eyes met. He looked at me so carefully, wary, wondering; I had all but gawked at him, consumed by his presence in a way I had never been by anything before.

I swallowed, my shortened arm returned to my side.

We had continued on that day, and so would I.

Across the bridge, to where our party joined Leliana and Chancellor Roderick; a cunning woman and a blustering man, or as I had inwardly considered them at the time, _yet more angry shems._ There are always more angry shems. I recalled commenting that the focus should be the Breach, in the midst of their arguing; the corners of Solas’ lips had lifted in the corner of my eye. He had approved of my practicality. I had approved of his lips.

The path we had taken to the remnants of the Temple… a discreet way, back through old caves and storage rooms, climbing what had felt like endless ladders.

It was the path I knew, so I repeated it, each rung feeling strange on the soles of my bare feet. I’d been wearing boots last time; this time, I could feel the wood for how rickety it was, how unsteady a course I had chosen.

Yet as I exited the empty caves and walked past the area where we had rescued the missing scouts, I could not regret it.

It was near, now. Each step was cold, both memory and moment, passing one spot and then another where we’d had to stop to fight. The area was free of demons now, quiet, only the scar in the sky lingering above to tell the truth of the spirits that had fallen here.

The perimeter of where the Temple of Sacred Ashes had once stood marked a turn; the austere beauty of the snow crossed into the evidence of destruction, much of it still appearing fresh, as though the explosion at the Conclave had been days ago and not years. The macabre sculptures of bodies turned to stone, more skeleton than flesh, remained, reaching up to shield their heads in a final act of futility.

Further in, the landscape I recalled from my first conscious day with the Anchor changed; Corypheus had chosen this for our final battleground, the place where I had interrupted his ritual, and so the evidence of our last conflict littered the ground. Sundered rocks and boulders, debris strewn everywhere; ruins of ruins.

Still, something in my internal compass noted the spot where I had channeled the orb’s energy through Corypheus; it was nearly the spot where I had acquired the Anchor in the first place. The memory had been taken, and then restored, and so it was that it felt a little tender, still, to see it in my mind, my foolish stumbling sending me on a collision course with an ancient artifact that should have ended my life.

This was where Solas had truly first touched me, I realized. His magic was so much a part of him, and as I grasped his focus, so had I grasped him. The Anchor became part of me. _He_ became part of me.

It would have killed me, had not his own intervention saved my life. And again, years later. These events had made me.

Here, I had been made into the Herald. Here, I had defeated a false god as the Inquisitor.

And now I was here as a Keeper, after a fashion, that duty for which I had first been trained. To avert the Dread Wolf’s gaze from Thedas. To keep his goals from destroying those things I loved. That was the duty of a Keeper, was it not? A Keeper’s place. To remember. To guide. To protect.

And yet, as I stood there on the ground that had determined so much of my life, I felt I was as nothing at all.


End file.
